July 18, 2008

I just spent over an hour posting the conclusion, and when I clicked on Publish Post, it told me there was a conflicting error, and my whole post is GONE!!!

Man! This is like the firs time I didn't type it up in a word doc first! I don't believe it. I'm not so sure I have time to do it again right now!!! BUM!!!

I saw this happened to JenGal on her blog, I should have learned from her misfortune!!!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE!!!!K, I figured, since it keeps saving them as a draft, I must have it somewhere, so I went to Edit Posts, and it was there! Apparently you have 30 minutes to post a draft, so I've got it... It appeared below this post.:)YEA!

Sorry It's been so long since I posted the conclusion! I can honestly say I've been using the dickens out of my desk and not finding time to post here. Why does it feel like posting takes so much time? So yes Mer, my friend, the desk did eat me up!!

K, the conclusion is rather easy!!! And I can't believe I'm sharing the before pictures, my room looks so messy. In fact, one of them is after I cleared a space, I couldn't share the real bad one. You'd have a bad opinion of me if I did. Looking back now, this new desk is totally making a difference in how much mess I leave out. It's a joy to tidy up since I have a place for everything that doesn't feel far away. Remember I said it's a whole 4 steps to my closet! I think I'll include that photo too! (I'm trying to make the wait worth it!)

This is my purse wall where I had my two mis-matched desks side by side. You can see that 125" of work space was just not enough, it was always a mess!

After clearing the room where the new desk would be on these two walls... I positioned my drawers where they would share the load of the desk tops (doors). Behind these drawers, I screwed a piece of 2x4 into the wall at a stud, then a second smaller 2x4 into that. I was sure to screw at the seam of the desks because I needed the 2x4 without screws in it for the next bit.

Up at the top of the desks I placed a piece of masking tape over my finish, and drilled through the desk into the small 2x4. Using a bit the size of a dowel. I then pushed a piece of dowel through the desk top and into the 2x4 to "lock" it in place.

You may be wondering why I didn't do something more permanent... I don't know other than I like the idea of easily being able to move my desk if I need or want to. This way I have support on the wall side of the desk, it's not going to go anywhere with that dowel in place, and in theory, it's not permanent.

Where two desk tops met, I drilled two holes. (one in each corner) At the desk ends... I just drilled the one. This picture here is at the left end of the desk.

Here is the New left side of the desk!

This is the middle, and if you are wondering what that little brown table is under the desk...

It's a shortcut.

I decided it would be much easier to put something as a support under the deep corner of the desk, like a leg, than it would be to make more supports like I did above. Also.... these walls aren't all that straight, which I was assuming because so few walls are perfectly straight. So...

I got an old sewing machine cabinet I bought at a yard sale for $5. I cut the legs down 1.5" to make it the perfect height and I placed it under the corner in the back. The desk is deep enough that it's not in the way of my legs, and it saved me quite a bit of time and effort not having to try and drill more 2x4's into the wall at that deep corner. AND, if you are wondering, you really can't even see it when you're in here.

This is the right side of the desk. I now have a place to make jewelry here on the right. I can scrap in my corner with my garbage hole, and work at my computer on the left. With these "designated" areas, I find it much easier to work cleanly. That sounds silly I'm sure, but I have drawers for office stuff next to the computer, drawers for scrappy stuff in the corner, and drawers for jewelry stuff at the end.

And then there's that closet... I have shelves in it to keep my scrappy stuff organized. They were a sinch to put together. I'll save explaining that for another time. This picture is the left side of the closet for scrappy stuff, the right side is for all my paper and bins of fabric. Putting shelves in this closed emptied the room when I first did it. I got so much in there!

Thanks for visiting, and sorry for being so neglecting. Hope it was worth the wait. Maybe I gave you an idea or two that you will be able to use?